1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a grinder, especially to a grinder for preparing brewing materials.
2. Description of the Prior Arts
Tea has multiple effects such as stimulating the mind, increasing immunity to disease, reducing cholesterol, protecting against cancer, anti-aging and so on. The tea beverage becomes one of the indispensable beverages in people's life based on the culture of tea in eastern society for thousands of years and the tradition of afternoon tea in western high society. In recent decades, Taiwan has developed the shaken-tea (also well known as “bubble tea”) culture so that the tea can be hot or cold and even fruit, milk, bubbles and so on can be incorporated into the tea by the shaker or the mixer. Then the user can choose their own desired flavors for the tea so tea becomes more and more popular. In recent years, the tea beverages have been popularized all over the world by becoming a popular nonalcoholic beverage.
Shaken-tea uses liquid tea prepared in advance as a base, but the liquid tea prepared in advance has an expiration time and will spoil with time or by the ambient temperature. Since more people are enjoying tea, the varieties of liquid tea at the scene is developed (i.e. brewing the liquid tea at the store in front of the consumer using a brewing machine when the consumer orders the shaken-tea.) Thus, the shaken-tea provided to the consumer is fresher and more palatable. In the prior art, directly using tea leaves to brew tea takes longer and requires a larger container to allow the tea leaves to have enough room to scatter so that better liquid tea is obtained. Then the liquid tea brewed with tea leaves ground into a powder has a better taste and saves more nutrient content than the liquid tea that is brewed from larger tea leaves. Moreover, using powdered tea to brew the liquid tea causes the liquid tea to have the same excellent taste and quality as the liquid tea brewed in a traditional tea pot.
However, the conventional way to prepare powdered tea is to grind a mass of tea leaves into powdered tea, and the powdered tea is divided into multiple small portions. Each portion is packaged in a small bag so that human power is needed to pack the powdered tea. The small bags end up being waste when the powdered tea is brewed into liquid tea and pollutes the environment. In addition, the powdered tea absorbs moisture easier than tea leaves since the powdered tea is smaller size has a larger total surface area. Thus, temperature and humidity changes may spoil the powdered tea. Spoiled powdered tea loses nutrient content and flavor.
Although freshly ground coffee is well known in the current beverage market, conventional grinders for coffee beans are only suited for grinding coffee beans since the coffee beans have specific weights and shapes while the tea leaves are relatively light and have irregular shapes. A conventional grinder for coffee beans determines the grinding time based on the operation time of a grinding motor. If the conventional grinder for coffee beans is directly used to grind tea leaves, the grinding motor may idle when the tea leaves do not fall into the grinding area since the tea leaves are relatively light and have irregular shaped. Determining if the amount of ground powdered tea is adequate becomes harder for people doing the grinding. When the amount of ground powdered tea is incorrect, the flavor of the liquid tea is accordingly influenced.
To overcome the shortcomings, the present invention provides a grinder for preparing brewing materials to mitigate or obviate the aforementioned problems.